Conscious People in an Unconscious Industry
A case for a moratorium of media production: Lights, Camera, Frivolity
Written by Max Gould-Meisel 2019
The Entertainment Industry, as stated in the name, provides an illusory respite to the mundane. On a global scale, and especially in the United States - the veritable birthplace of “The Biz” - viewers are turned consumers by the efforts of creative and business savvy workers, union or non-union, turning out endless, and now streamable, content. And in the year 2020 and beyond, this is a global phenomenon raised to a frivolous, programmed and manipulative degree. I believe the Entertainment Industry needs to reallocate its resources and people power to solving the climate crisis. Here’s why:
I worked in the business for 8 years, and based myself in Los Angeles: the media universe hub - an epicenter for dreamers. I worked in a myriad of formats/shows as an assistant director: low and medium-budget features, high-budget commercials, new media/streaming TV shows, union and non-union gigs, and slews of print and educational work. My peers and I were hustlers, “making moves” where we could, balancing a freelance lifestyle with the survivalism of LA. This business supports the day-play, and the long-play, all at the same time. Picture living with an erratic schedule, no determined working hours, up before the sun and returning past sundown, an odometer commensurate to the unexpected places and locations traveled to for filming, zero job guarantee, and the constant feeling/motivation of expendability if your “A game” wasn’t brought—and sold—to the highest bidder a.k.a. the producer.
The types of jobs available within the industry make it a petri-dish for the passionate, convicted, motivated and sometimes disillusioned person, to try their wears amongst thousands of others, competing — and yet somehow supporting each other — for the same jobs. The part-time, self-scheduling lifestyle of personal determination mixed with the occasional stability of a long term gig makes life here a “seemingly pointless” worry. I say seemingly pointless because, somehow, through the anxiety of imminent rent and various life bills, another gig always came along (if you previously conducted yourself on the last job with 100% of your soul).
The specific daily exchanges in these infrastructures were as follows: “ “Hi! It’s so good to see you!” “Hey…you!” (forgets name—plays it off like they know each other) “What have you been up to?” “Oh, so many things, I’ve lost track. [this, and this, and this, and next week I’m on this.]” “Oh, nice. I’ve been on this gig for like 2 months and the producer is driving the crew crazy and we can’t wait to wrap because, dude, these overnights are killing me. Plus, I’m just so burnt out I can’t wait to take some time off. Wait, you have to remind me your name - what did we work on again?” “Shit, I’m glad you said something. I know your face and I’m trying to remember but I can’t!” “Was it [this?]” “Nope” “Gah, I don’t know. Let’s just play the email game and look it up. Whats your email again?” ” … This kind of exchange happened more times than I can remember. Sometimes you foster a friendship for life and you remember more than just that person’s name. I’ve been lucky enough to have continued working alongside some of those people. But the majority of the people creating content won’t remember your name after 2 months, or ever. This anonymous, name-on-a-callsheet-that-no-one-reads apathy is rampant in Big Entertainment. And logically taking into account the sheer number of films/tv shows and commercials already available, the thousands of people who work in this industry won’t remember each other in the future and you might become another vague email identity.
As bleak, unsupportive, and pessimistic as this life sounds, I wouldn’t trade my time in this world, for the world, ever. I worked amongst the most stimulating and adaptable types of people. If ever we faced a challenge, and because of that adversity, we overcame with creativity and camaraderie. The hardships, ‘the weeds,’ ‘the beast,’ the ’it is what it is’ - ism of that life, is what fueled us to expeditiously overcome those obstacles. And we overcame by moving on our feet, for 15 hours a day, running on sub-par coffee, sustained with food scarfed down while standing, together. These are the folks I would want to see running a city, county, or country. We were, and are, the people who can pull resources to fix things, whatever they are. We are the conscious, elevated, high functioning and caring people who let go of their egos when duty calls. What we did/do - “making pictures” - can give people pleasure, or help them through emotions and/or pain, and many crews I worked with knew their participatory role in these outcomes. A lot of creatives will attest that if they just touch/reach one person with their art, then the struggle was/would be worth it. The actual worth, more immediately, is definitely the money made, for ourselves and for the content providers. You do it for the love of the art, or for the paycheck: both are sweet deals if executed correctly. On all the projects I crewed, we created conversations and cultural phenomena. We literally informed and directed society. We filmed the shows that so many hold dear. We shot the movies that get people through depression, sickness, or are viewed at family gatherings to provide joy. And the people who make them are special, thoughtful and determined.
The flip side to the existence of so much media content? The misused power/influence and the waste. This is where my soul finds issue: my peers and I used our power, time and money for an industry of fantasy, yielding a myriad of products stemming from misappropriated goals and results. We were told what to make, so all the while we subdued and tranquilized the true fire of connective creativity within our hearts. We are dreamers who create fantasy because reality was, and is, difficult to look at. The energy, resources, people power, willingness to overcome adversity, and processing of information that is used in the entertainment business is an incredible tool. BUT, the year is 2020, and the industries, infrastructures and institutions as we know them are being re-examined, all across the world. The old roles and habitual behaviors are being re-vamped. The same oligarchical, top down policymaking of corrupt governments and capitalism made its marks in film/tv.
I believe Big Entertainment needs a cessation and re-prioritizing of the power it holds. What I wish those in control had done, and why this criticism is being written, is to utilize their power and influence for a different purpose - to manage and extend the resilience of human civilization on Earth and to sustain the finite resources we have, not create shows which add to the sedentary dis-ease our species feels. The crews I worked with were, and are, caring people, with wide awarenesses that see the stories of the world through a lens of justice, righteousness and love. The combined disciplines of our efforts took and extorted the materials of Earth for the monetary gain of viewership turned consumerism. We were at the behest of the power structure, who really have one goal: profit. I believe people over profit is the new direction Big Entertainment can move towards. As it is, all of that content is eventually cycled through sundry streaming platforms, seasoned out by syndicates, backlogged by researchers, ignored by viewers or indigested by anxious media addicts anyway. I implore we, the workers, demand a moratorium be placed on all media content creation to improve the planet and protect its terminable resources. I implore that we make reality the dream, and not dream through the reality. The choices from the Top do not reflect the needs of the Majority.
Why and how should an industry be sustained when its members participate in this capitalism-run-amock structure? What if we accepted that we HAVE ENOUGH CONTENT to watch, as it exists right now? Isn’t it interesting that documentary content is so fascinating and the serialized, narrative shows are becoming hackneyed? The reality of the world is worth looking at, but not only through a lens. The stories we see advertised are the re-purposed and re-packaged ideas of cinema past, wielding its base to continue consuming through insane misdirection from the sensibility of real-world needs.
The infrastructures available to film/tv are under-utilized. If the teams who prep a movie would instead plan a local clean up effort or organize a social justice cause, that team would be incredibly capable, cooperative, understanding, and adaptable. Again, it’s 2020, and the project needs to be “Earth” not “Insert Big-Tent Syndicated Show.” OUR SPECIES IS LIVING IN A CLIMATE CRISIS. How can we justify making a Starbucks commercial, with its extraneous and onerous presence OFF the set, while using perfectly pristine plastic, in the shot, ON set (which will be thrown away) while the oceans keep filling up with those VERY products? And how can we use plastic water bottles to hydrate while working on that job? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? We might as well just dump the waste generated on set into the nearest river and dance dark rainbows around the dumpster fire of un-renewable consumerist antics. Or, rather, give each crew member a plastic bag of trash and recycling at the end of the day to open up in their living rooms, into their child’s play-pin, because that’s what you really made today: not a commercial and not money - you made waste. You and your crew members, who are decent and loving people, were and are so caught up in the numbing and manipulative machine that your product is (e.g. in the Starbucks case) ACTUAL waste. We need to take a moment to LOOK at how crazy this system is; you and I use resources in order to market and sell products to others, which they will dispose of as waste, in turn, because we told them using it was the cool thing to do. ‘Once used, then what,’ asked Earth? ‘How many more commercials can we sit through’ asked Everyone?
It’s not only the necessary survivalist, amnesic-nature of the industry that makes it seem and feel like nothing matters. The real matters of Big Entertainment are the actions taken by disempowered crew members: the decisions and choices to use food, water and power in the way that they are told. I made these choices too. I made the daily selections in brain computational categorization to prioritize and get the job done. If we needed to run a transportation van to cool off actors sitting and waiting on location for their scene, we did it; if we threw out barely used snacks because the presentation of a ’fresh’ table mattered more than not wasting food, we did it; if we laminated paper signs for doorways, only to be thrown out and not recycled because the producer said that was corporation and company policy, we did it; if we drained a 40L carafe of coffee because it was sitting for more than 2 hours, we did it; if we needed to buy 20 rolls of gaffers tape, tape the entirety of a set for a specific department reason, then toss the tape like it was nothing, we did it; finally, if we used disposable cups and cutlery, or plastic bottles for water because a reusable method was too time consuming or expensive, we did it. Mounds and mounds of trash and waste were, are, and continue to be, generated amongst the interactions back and forth on sets every day. Choices are made because the project needs completion. That is the nature of the beast: we leave it all on set, in the waste bin, and nothing really matters because “it is what it is, and we aren’t curing cancer, so don’t take things so seriously.”
There is a difference between Quality/Quantity and Films/Advertisements; I myself know the value of a good movie and how it can personally and socially transform paradigms once held by a culture. Cinematic experiences like that need to be preserved. “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” But the shows and movies being created, as seen for example in the re-makes of Disney cartoon classics as ‘live-action’ movies, drives the goal forward of obvious re-packaging belonging to established franchises and re-hashing old ideas for profit. Re-makes are not art - they are money making machines. Now to be fair, many of the critically acclaimed ‘great’ movies are adaptations of perviously existing literature. Yet, the current over-saturated crusade to re-make classics and divert a pre-existing show to a slightly new direction (new race, new time epoch, etc.) comes off as lazy, formulaic and unoriginal. There is very little originality anymore. Why so many re-makes? What’s the point? Content already exists, and new ‘creators’ are referencing past art movements, films, pictures and stories before allowing their attempts at brave imagination to exist. All of our entertainment has been said before; all our stories have been told; all our artifice is archived and can only meaningfully sustain this un-inspired drudge of these bewildering remakes for so long. What we see today isn’t brave, new, inspiring, or meaningful: its soundbite meme-forms of media transmitted to a nostalgic and forgetful society.
”The notion that the desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made everything topsy-turvy.”
Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness
This industry has a responsibility to overhaul, on a drastic scale, all the infrastructures and choices that contribute to the climate crisis. Those who ARE the industry will be most impacted by this call: there are plenty of social benefactors, vegans, self declared environmentalists, animal lovers, proffers of human rights, weekend warriors, social justice activists and the like in Big Entertainment. There are also 2nd amendment enthusiasts, voters of all political affiliations, practicing secularists, motor heads, equestrians, cyclists, devoted capitalists and socialists alike, who work amongst one another in harmony. Again, the adaptability and egoless existence is one of many things that make this business so special. The industry supports hard working and skilled craftspeople. There are masters of woodworking, mechanics, engineering, fabrication, economics, social sciences and marketing all sharing the same cities, roads, sets, studios, bathrooms and snack tables. Families are dependent on the work, and their lives are sustained by that work. That’s what makes calling for a moratorium so difficult and challenging. But we need a moratorium on Big Entertainment. These fine folk can redirect all their efforts, means of production, connections, and skills, towards a new future. A new future without the burden of creative mercantilism outweighing the right to a healthful and clean life; a new future with true community-engendering goals and practices; a new future with less trash; a new future with abundant forests, clean and over-flowing free water, roadways and trashcans nearly free of waste, and personally responsible samaritans who rely on themselves and their communities to address large issues. A future where a new prescription re-focuses the trickle down vision of enterprise, and where our human nature grows over the buildings of hypnotism.
Let us be so lucky that such highly trained workers, deserving of life and liberty, exist who can contribute to Project Earth, to the adjunct support of a Green New Future/Decade/Deal. Big Entertainment is extraneous, it’s frivolous, it’s numbing and manipulative. Imagine a world where the dreamers, the creatives, the hopeful empaths came together and self analyzed, saw the world as connected to them directly, and took bold action to preserve and protect that world. Image the responsible and inspirational example this would set for the millions of disenfranchised, alongside the millions of protesters, and all the millions unsure of what their future will hold. Imagine the empowering daily exchanges changing: “ “Hi Veronica! What a beautiful day to be alive. I’m so happy you are here.” “Hi Anne! I am grateful to share this sweet air with you. I feel luck to be alive alongside your family.” “Would you join us for dinner after we finish cleaning the community garden?” “I’d love to, see you soon.” “ Some may say the world “is what it is;” no, it is what it can be, and enough is enough. No more endless scrolling on Netflix.
POP … There goes the bubble
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Addendum: An Environmental Epilogue
“Is there an alternative, and do I have access to it right now?”
To be fair, my mother is still employed by Big Entertainment. She has been a fashion model her whole life and her perseverance has allowed me the privilege to chose my work and maintain a lifestyle based on honesty, hard work, and respect. My asking for a moratorium would directly take money away from her living the life she deserves. She, like me throughout my years on set, has taken a responsible look into how she interacts with the items and people of her work, environmentally speaking. Years ago I began bringing my own plates, cutlery and drink containers to set. In curious and loving support, she tried this herself, and has since influenced her co-models and crews with her choices. She refuses water bottles, just like I did; she opts out of certain foods when they are wrapped in plastic; she seeks out composting and proper waste disposal containers on set; she reuses some containers that are unavoidably serviced. All these pivots in her daily activities are based on one question: “is there an alternative, and do I have access to it right now?”
Jean Luc-Godard said: “When I have a low budget I make it a lesson in economy.” Again, relating to those who hold power in Big Entertainment, the decisions are ultimately made by those who can pay. We all pay, for our actions, on the front end, or the back end. The front end: paying to hire someone employed by a company like Eco-Set, who sorts through all the materials on a shoot and helps deliver them to the proper industries who can recycle and reuse these supplies. The back end: paying for more water and air conditioning on the next shoot because it’s too hot to work without it, because the atmosphere is heating, because we use materials so unconsciously, because we are living in a climate crisis. This moratorium is a call from a rooted viewpoint of the systemic issue: are we not satisfied with our culture? During my employment in LA, some of my crew members were, and hopefully still are, people who strived for “green” sets. I’ve fielded calls from producers and coordinators asking what can be done in terms of waste, recyclability, and the circular nature of our resources. My response was, and can be, always distilled to analyzing each project and what is at the disposal of those with money: what are they willing to spend time thinking about? As a theoretical producer, ask yourself: are you willing to think about the downstream fish and marine life when you ask a production assistant to wash the newest, unreleased car with extra shine chemical cleaner so your wide shot of the car is spotless? Are you the kind of person who is willing to spend more time on set supervising the workstations, as to maximize the up-cycling and proper categorization (and follow through) of inventory? Are you someone who wants to combat the hunger of a runaway, unforgiving, uncaring capitalist machine? Are you willing and ready to make those questions into actionable plans, despite being told these thoughts don’t matter?
“…change actually comes in 5 stages, according to the American Psychological Association: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance.”
Ronnie Citron-Fink (Environmental Journalist)
So…NO…not all Big Entertainment can disappear tomorrow. It seems rather selfish to ask this of such an intrenched industry that provides a livelihood to the global economy, with wellbeing at stake that affects me directly, or indirectly. But yes of course there are steps one can take to “green” the industry; of course the choice to switch catered food from meat to plant based can impact the climate beneficially; of course a producer can buy snack foods with no plastic packaging at all; yes, the stories chosen for production can be curated to highlight the social and environmental injustice of our world, so the conversation progresses toward the solutions; yes, producers can hire crew and departments based on their willingness to partake in the cyclical/green economy of true awareness. All these choices are difficult and require conviction and followthrough. I’ve worked with some of these caring people and I hold them dear to my heart. They were half the reason I stayed in LA for 8 long years: being around those humans gave, and gives, me hope that the aforementioned analysis of industry can be changed. The commitment to the wellbeing of our fellow human on Earth is a choice akin to caring for your family and ensuring their survival in health and happiness. There are many choices, steps, and options available to us (almost too many, re: the endless Netflix scroll.)
First thing’s first: do you think about the topics written in this essay?
If so, ask the next question: is there an alternative, and do I have access it right now?
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead